A couple of weeks ago my daughter and I went to see Hugo. It is an immensely enjoyable film. I have not blogged about it because I have been thinking about it for quite a while. I don't know what I was looking for. Perhaps I thought there was some deep meaning I should have gleaned, a message for the ages of something. After much time stewing about this, I don't think there is anything like that. I think it was just a great show. Visually spectacular, the colors were vibrant and the scenes were exciting. I don't know how to describe this film as it seemed in some ways so different from others I have seen. We saw the 2D version as neither of us cares for 3D.
The story centers on a young boy named Hugo, the son of a clock maker. The father dies and which leaves Hugo in the care (and I use that word in its loosest possible sense) of his uncle, a drunk whose job it is to maintain the clocks at a massive railway station in Paris. The uncle lives and works behind the scenes at the station where Hugo joins him and learns how to work all the clocks. Eventually the uncle disappears. Much later in the film his body is pulled from the river where it is clear that, in a drunken stupor, he fell in many months previous. In the meantime, Hugo continues to maintain the clocks so it won't be discovered that he is a child now living alone. If he is found out, he will be sent to the orphanage. We are told that would not be a good situation.
The only thing Hugo has that belonged to his father is an old automaton that doesn't work. Hugo has been trying to fix it and when he thinks he has completed the task, he finds he needs a special key to make it operate. He believes it will be a written message from his father. The remainder of the story is about how Hugo finds a friend who happens to have the key he needs. Together, they get the automaton working and try to solve the mystery it creates.
This is a captivating story with a happy ending pulled at the last second from the jaws of misery. Very well worth seeing on the big screen.
Grade: A-.
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